Arthur Kaser, Professor of Gastroenterology in the Department of Medicine, was recently awarded a 5-year Wellcome Trust Investigator Award to study how genes and environment interact in Paneth cells in the gut to trigger Crohn’s disease.

Loss of tolerance to commensals and pathobionts is a key feature of inflammatory bowel disease, and the Kaser laboratory will harness their newly devised method to identify the immune-relevant ‘immunobiome’ within the staggeringly complex intestinal microbiota.

“We hope to be able to make major inroads into the fundamental biology of these debilitating conditions by attacking environment–microbiota–gene interactions from multiple angles” says Arthur.